The BBC yesterday were quoting a US expert - Ward Carroll, a former navy pilot who is now editor of the Military.com website (don't know how respected he is), on the "fog of war" issue.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6337137.stm
The pilots, he (Carroll) said, would be trying to balance competing demands.
"If I am too cautious and we get a village taken out, the question would arise: 'Why did you not drop your weapons when you were cleared to fire?'"
On the other hand, he added, the pilot saw the signal that should have told him he was not looking at hostile troops.
Now the speech quotations do not reflect what either of the pilots said, this is purely his conjecture of what they could have been thinking. But what strange conjecture - "if ... we get a village taken out" then the pilots would have been questioned as to why they hadn't fired.
If the vehicles had been Iraqi, why would they have "taken out a village" when they (had they been Iraqi) would more likely have wished to get into the village and hide from any possible attack?
And this assumption is from an expert? Makes you think.